Crime scene photo of the victim's room taken in 1986. Credit: PPD
In 1986, a stranger abducted a toddler from their bedroom. He took the victim to a construction site, sexually assaulted the child, and left them there when they started screaming. As dawn broke, a couple of newspaper delivery individuals found the toddler and called the police, who reunited them with their parents.
Following the brutal crime, officers gathered evidence and talked to the victim. Unfortunately, they were unable to identify a suspect.
Fast forward 25 years, it’s now 2011 and DNA analysis is growing. A Phoenix Police Department (PPD) Cold Case Detective was looking at the case again and noticed a few evidence items that had not been tested yet. The items were sent to the PPD Crime Lab, where analysts found an unknown male’s DNA profile. They entered the profile into CODIS, and it matched to a 1992 sexual assault of a minor in Henderson, Texas.
The case was eerily similar to the 1986 case. In the Henderson case, the suspect broke into a home, sexually assaulted a minor, and then fled. At the time, officers were able to get a description of the suspect and DNA evidence, but there were no leads.
In 2022, PPD Cold Case Sergeant Aaron Rodriguez was reviewing files when he came across this particular case and noticed information that could possibly be the key. He assigned it to seasoned Cold Case Detective Javier Quezada.
In hopes of finding new leads, Quezada worked with Texas Department of Public Safety (DPS). They submitted more evidence to the Arizona DPS’s Crime Lab for additional analysis through the Maricopa County Sexual Assault Kit Initiative.
However, after two years—despite reinterviewing the victims, reexamining evidence, and chasing every possible lead—the case remained unsolved. That’s when detectives decided to go the genetic genealogy route.
They got a hit, and finally the decades-long quest for answers ended with a name: David Roy Munt. In present time, detectives tracked Munt down to Longview, Texas—only about 30 miles from Henderson, where the second sexual assault occurred in 1992.
On Aug. 26, 2024, Quezada and Texas DPS arrested Munt. A Texas judge ordered him held on a $1 million bond while awaiting extradition to Phoenix to face his charges.
Republished courtesy of Phoenix Police